Synopsis

Deep in the Ararat Mountains of Turkey, a secret organization known as ARCAM has found what is believed to be Noah's Ark. However, the U.S. Machine Corps., a rogue organization of the Pentagon, wants to take over the Ark as a means of global supremacy. Only a special ARCAM operative known as a Spriggan stands in their way. Japanese Spriggan Yu Ominae teams up with French Spriggan Jean-Jacques Mondo to combat members of the U.S. Machine Corps. led by Col. MacDougall—a genetically-enhanced boy with deadly psionic powers. However, they must act fast and stop MacDougall before he uses the Ark for his own agenda.

Don’t let that put you off though, there's still some fun to be had in the form of cool 90's action!

This is the first, and currently only time I've seen Turkey depicted in anime. The crew did an ok job capturing its diverse nature; that of being stuck between Europe and Asia. We see metropolitan Istanbul briefly, and far eastern parts like Diyarbakir in the anime and it looks good.

Well actually, the animation in Spriggan is more than good; its impressive considering it was made in 1998. As expected of Studio 4C. Facial reactions and action scenes are detailed and you find yourself scanning the whole screen to take it all in.

For a moment I thought this anime would be totally realistic but that notion goes out the window with a chase scene in Istanbul which made me grin like an idiot. I swear the main character's modelled after Jackie Chan. He moves around like a hyperactive monkey, doing back-flips and swinging on cables, its fluid and very dynamic watching him beat people up mercilessly.

Unfortunately that is all the character has going for him. Why did he have to be a 17 year old school kid anyway? Why not just a regular guy in his 20's or 30's? The anime doesn’t delve into his dual lifestyle, that of being a school kid one day and ARCAM operative the next, and his extremely brief flashback-assisted back-story is almost like an afterthought. All it does is explain his origin, not shed light on anything in his personality, because he doesn’t have one to begin with! He's a walking cliché.

So in the end I just see the character as a cynical attempt at appeasing teens. "Hey check this out! Wouldn’t it be cool if a kid just like you was a kick-ass mercenary!?" Not really. Unless he's getting the shit kicked out of him by a girl called Chidori Kaname, I'm not interested. At least Full Metal Panic gave us a compelling back-story to make the entire story have weight. The action scenes in Spriggan may be unrealistic, but they could have retained some sense of coherency with the narrative, it feels very lazy and my Suspend-Disbelief-O-Meter just wasn’t compatible this time.

I can enjoy an over the top action-fest as much as the next Read or Die fan, but here it’s not fun and it’s not dramatic, and when it finally builds to an ever-increasingly illogical Akira-esque climax with a psychic super powered deformed kid and apocalyptic style crap blowing up, I'm losing even more respect for it to be even contemplating Katsuhiro Otomo’s masterpiece, let alone riffing off of it.

Spriggan feels both old-school with its late 90's violence; the kind where people and objects are eviscerated with unabashed glee that would make the guys who worked on Ninja Scroll hyperventilate in joy, but the anime also feels ahead of its time because of that attention to detail and unconventional setting. You get the sense that if only the story were much much better, as in: if Studio 4C took a different approach at adapting the manga or just took an entirely different one to adapt in the first place, it would have been nestled comfortably in a list of Top Anime Movies Of The 90's; next to stuff like Production I.G's Ghost in the Shell which came out a few years earlier.

The story isn’t even worth mentioning; it’s just a bunch of plot points ticked off one by one. Guy has to go from A to B; objects have to get from Y to Z. Spriggan has to go from 'plan-to-watch' to 'completed' with a score that means it barely entertained me for the running time and I'll probably never watch it again. An interesting if disappointing look at Studio 4C's earlier efforts. They've come a long way indeed.read more

* Plot that starts getting religiously and philosophical towards the last one third to try to make the movie seem more "deep" than just a regular action packed flick? CHECK!

* Somehow the fate of the world rests in the hands of our hero spy, because the bad guys would really mess stuff up? CHECK!

This is a great action flick if you like these sorts of movies. Because it is animated there is a lot more licence to make the action even better, in live action I bet insurance wouldn't have covered this! The characters are sort of one dimensional but there's so much eye candy and other stuff to see one can't help but be entertained. An action movie of this calibre is like taking all the best scenes of Black Lagoon and compressing it into 90 minutes of adrenaline. Great fun and you'd enjoy this if you like a combination of James Bond, Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones.read more

An organization codenamed ARCAM has a mission to retrieve ancient artifacts and keep them secret. One of their teams discover the Ark of Noah spoken of in the Old Testament. Another organization wants it, and they're leaving a path of destruction in their pursuit of it. The Ark has the power to completely change the world. One of ARCAM's top agents in an elite group called Spriggan named Yu Ominae is pulled into the confrontation. Yu journey's to the heart of the conflict. -summary

Spriggan is another anime title that condenses its story to fit into 90 mins., when in truth, it would have been a much better outing in an OVA or even a TV series format. Well, no sense on crying over slashed stories. Spriggan is an action first, deal with characters and story later type of deal. The action and production values are so well done I know plenty of people whom forgot about the story altogether.

The production values are the main selling point. The artwork has many moments of beauty from snow laden mountain tops, to dark and dreary caves. There's a great amount of detail in the backgrounds, and although the character designs feel reminiscent of Akira, there are moments of creativity. The locations and set pieces are simply eye candy, and there's never a dull moment. The animation which does use a small amount of CG turns in some heavily appealing action segments; the viewer will be treated to bodies being ate up by gun fire, and very well choreographed action assisted by splendid camera work. The action fan will find quite a bit here to keep them occupied. I also like the mature feel of the anime, as it has this level of darkness to it which frees it completely from that "light up the mood" feel. In regards to the voice acting, it's been awhile since I saw the sub so I can't recall anything from it. However, the English dub had a competent cast, Chris Patton playing Yu was just as good as normally, while Kevin Corn as Colonel McDougall hammed it up with an annoying child-like high pitch voice, that hasn't gotten any less annoying over the years.

Spriggan maintains a very consistent tone on the serious side, and it definitely needed to sustain that feel because it does handle some dark material. The story takes a stab at a different variation of the Great Flood, and some of the things will probably get under the skin of the religious; but in the end it all comes off as window-dressing, because the entire story for the most part plays second to the action.

The plot follows Yu and another Spriggan operative by the name of Jean-Jacques Mondo, as they battle against heavily armed and powerful cyborg warriors. The plot is heavily action-saturated with small pieces of story here and there. It would probably be insulting to even say character development is brushed upon, since Mondo is only there to fulfill a role, and outside of how he fights you learn nothing about him. Yu's background is crammed in towards the end, but he becomes a pretty cool character early on, so he's easy to get into. The lead villain by the name of Colonel McDougall for the most part was that bad guy with serious delusions of grandeur. He wants the Ark to use its power and begin a second Great Flood.

Spriggan really could have been better. If only the writers chose to flesh out the character and story, plus take full advantage of its heavy themes. Instead, they wanted to focus on high production values. The only reason I don't completely have a problem with this is because it did very well on what it set out for. I will mention that it has a couple of deus ex machina moments that had me wondering could they have thought of something better.

I found Spriggan to be a mildly enjoyable action-fest. It doesn't suffer from tonal shifts, and it sticks to its guns. If you're searching for that little popcorn flick and you want to leave your brain at the door. Then this is that anime for you. If I had to liken it to other anime titles; it would probably be similar to Afro Samurai or Ninja Scroll.

A nice mix of several elements from the Akira movie and a lot of American action films, Spriggan seems to be the easy choice for all those who want good action and a twist of metaphysics. Unfortunately, the real potential of the movie was hardly exploited, thus it remains just a quick watch for the average American formula fan who digs lots of explosions under the influence of oriental aesthetics. The movie encompasses so many action clichés that fails to be anything else other than an optical delight hanging over a story written by an 8 year old.

ART SECTION: 8/10 [Starts great, ends not so great.]

The first impression I had of the movie was “WOW! Holy sh*t, it rocks!” For a 1998 production, the animation is superb. Characters and objects have a lot of detail and move realistically most of the time. Plus, there are practically no stills or repeating frames! Seriously, everyone moves all the time and never performs the same gesture twice. The animators used motion capture and filmed real actors in order to get this result. I tell you, only a dozen movies ever managed to get it so good. The Miyazaki films, Akira, Ghost In The Shell and a few others are on par with this baby. Great stuff, I tell you.

The highlight in the movie is the car chase in a Turkish city, in the first half of the movie. This is better than most Hollywood films featuring a similar scene. The characters use martial arts, weapons, arms and the camera moves like crazy. All of which, happen in a realistically depicted Middle East city, full of by-standers and traditional decorations.

The second half of the movie is where things start to get ugly. The events take place in an arctic enviroment, which is nothing more than a blank landscape. There are lots of visual effects, caused by the psyonic villain and an ancient Doomsday device but all these feel very superficial as they lack the realism in physics of the first half of the movie. Sure, many will say that superhumans with psychic abilities, cybernetic implants and uber strength fighting in ancient ruins, full of neon lights and laser beams make far better brawling than normal people having a car chase in a typical city. Still, realism goes haywire in the second half and the amazing detail in cloths and backgrounds gives its place to cheesy explosions and a thousand drone soldiers, all of which look and dress alike. Devolving the optical feeling of the backgrounds into a testosterone hype of endless explosions simply does not work for me.

Thus, animation loses two points. One for becoming far more conventional and superficial later in the film and one for the drop in physic realism during the final battles.

SOUND SECTION: 7/10 [Hollywood treatment.]

The music themes have a really epic feeling around them, boosting the suspense sky high. Very good in building tense.
Very good to listen to, but nothing great to remember about. Sound effects consist mostly of sounds of explosions but sometimes there are nice touches, such as making characters sound distant when they are far from the camera. Nothing bad about them.

The voice acting and the dialogues are what damage the whole. Everyone sounds very lukewarm and most of the talking consists of stupid one-liners such as “You can’t defeat me. I am God!” and “As if I would lose to a runt like you. I’ll fight you up to the gates of hell!” Three points down because of them.

CHARACTER SECTION: 3/10 [Cool visuals! Too bad those pesky characters are in the way and block the view…

Ah, pretty bad. Since this is a movie there is practically no time for character development for any of the cast. Besides that, none of them has an imposing presence or looks special enough to give notice. Hell, the villains are supposed to be cyborgs and yet look more stupid than great. They turned an otherwise realistic optical feeling into the average freak show of fighting shonen titles. The main character has a very typical appearance and his backdrop story has been used so many times in action titles that leaves you with no feelings about him. He has this blonde partner next to him but you get squat info about him. And then we have the main villain, a crazy, megalomaniac super powerful telekinetic kid that simply wants to play God by destroying the world. Duh! There are some secondary characters in the story, such as the professor and the hero’s boss, but are there just for taking up time. You could remove them completely from the movie without any problem.

Pretty pathetic for a cast, the only thing that saves some face is the hero’s flashback in the ending that offers a simple insight about his character. All the rest are practically drones that are there to be killed without a second thought.

STORY SECTION: 3/10 [Indiana Jones meets Akira.]

Pretty simple and straightforward. There is this secret organization that finds ancient Doomsday devises and mobilizes superhuman agents if some opposing organization messes things up. Well, the villains in the story steal Noah’s Ark, which in the context of the film it is this huge neon glow contraption that can destroy the world. The hero is an uber powerful warrior that has to fight former colleagues and prevent this kid with God Syndrome from using the device.

There are no real surprises in the scenario. Half of the duration is about battles amongst super freaks and the other half are run-of-the-mill dialogues about ideals and grand-scaled dreams of grandeur we have seen a billion times already. If that wasn’t bad enough, the conclusion is actually a teaser. “The battle has just started!” mentions the villain, as he reveals there are dozens of other Doomsday devises and super freaks like himself around the world. This movie is clearly meant to be the pilot to a series that never came to be.

VALUE SECTION: 1/10, ENJOYMENT SECTION: 3/10 [-I’ll be back! -I won’t be here to welcome you.]
Well, it is a light watch and does pack a lot of great graphics. Then again, story and characters suck. All my fondness about the movie faded after seeing the hero defeating the bad guys and surviving nuclear explosions, no matter how many bones he had broken. Plus, that open ending felt too much like a lame excuse for a sequel that left a sour taste in my mouth. The chances of liking or watching the movie again are less than few.

VERDICT: 4/10
A Hollywood imitator with some Japanese overtones. Not much to expect. read more

Recommendations

Origin and Spriggan are about saving the world from huge mountains (or something that looks like a mountain). The main characters are also very similar: they have strong personalities and a great aim. If you like watching good guys save the world, you will enjoy watching these.

Both movies feature an athletic hero, who gets a power-up, alone against an apocalyptic industrial force bent on world domination. Both movies also have a themes surrounding the man vs. nature, ecological concerns.

-Both have something from the bible
-In both of them the main characters are less 'human' and more machine or a cyborg
-Both of them have the 'bad' people who want to start over the humanity
-Both of them are movies
-Both of them have the kid who is in a high rank (commander, colonel)
-In both of them, characters use either guns and unnormal weapons and equipment
-Both of them have an orgizination which have 'agents' who are sorted by numbers

More super soldier action drama that goes without the inclusion of all-too-convenient magic. Similarly impressive kinetic animation. Canaan has greater detail given its time and tech, but maybe not as much fluidity. One disappointment is that no one is a true brute in Canaan. No trucks being crushed under the force of a diving punch.